DON'T GET CAUGHT (The Jack Shepherd Novels Book 5)

by Jake Needham

  “Honestly? I’m not sure I understand either. I have been asked by someone to look into an unrelated matter while I’m here, but he was concerned my name might be on an immigration watch list. He was worried I might have difficulty entering the country, or that I might be flagged and placed under surveillance while I’m here. That was why he provided me with this Canadian passport to use to enter the country under a name other than my own. He assured me the passport was genuine, and I did use it to enter without any difficulty.”

  Mr. Wang tapped on the Canadian passport again. “John Smith?”

  I nodded.

  “How very droll.”

  I nodded again.

  “Why would the Thais have you on an immigration watch list?”

  “I’ve been involved in matters here in the past which might cause some members of the present government to think I could be a problem for them.”

  “I see.”

  I was happy to see Mr. Wang appeared more curious about that than concerned.

  “And are you?” he asked. “A problem for them, I mean.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Mr. Wang nodded and thought that over briefly.

  “What is this other matter you are looking into?” he asked.

  “It isn’t appropriate for me to say, just as it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to tell anyone else about my business with you. Please accept my assurance that it has nothing whatever to do with you or with the person you have been asked to arrange for me to meet. This other matter is completely unrelated to you and to him. You have my word on that.”

  Mr. Wang leaned back in the chair, folded his arms, and looked at me.

  I figured one of two things would happen then. Either Mr. Wang would stand up and walk out of the room without another word, or he would raise a hand and signal the waiter to bring him coffee.

  I had nothing more to say. I had made my case as well as I could. Nothing more remained for me to do but sit out the silence and wait for the delivery of the verdict.

  In a moment it came. Mr. Wang pushed both passports back across the table to me, raised a hand, and asked the waiter to bring him coffee.

  After his coffee was served, Mr. Wang took a sip. He must have liked it because then he took another. Then he put the cup down and smiled at me.

  “This has all been most unexpected, Mr. Shepherd.”

  “As it has been for me.”

  Mr. Wang laughed, apparently genuinely. “They told me you were a most unusual man for a laowei. I see that is indeed the case.”

  Laowei is the Mandarin expression for a Caucasian. It is more usual in Hong Kong and the south to hear people use the Cantonese term, which is gwailo. I wondered if that meant Mr. Wang was from the north. Or even if he was actually a Thai rather than a Chinese and had learned to speak Chinese from a Mandarin speaker. Then I wondered why I thought it made any difference.

  “I appreciate your honesty, Mr. Shepherd. And you are quite correct, of course. If you had not been honest with me and I had subsequently discovered all of this, we might indeed have a problem.”

  “And now? Do we have a problem?”

  “I don’t think so. You have been honest with me and you are entirely right to say your other professional undertaking should remain confidential. I accept your representation that your other business has nothing to do with us. You come well recommended. We know you and think highly of you.”

  I was happy to be well recommended, of course, but I was less certain how I felt about knowing representatives of one of the most vicious and violent of Chinese triads were telling each other what a fine fellow I was. Still, this probably wasn’t the best time to worry about that so I simply nodded.

  “You entering the country under the name John Smith is not entirely a bad thing for us, Mr. Shepherd.” Mr. Wang looked at me with something in his eyes that was almost but not quite a twinkle. “Honestly? I wish I had thought to arrange something like that myself.”

  “I doubt you would have chosen the name John Smith for me.”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Wang laughed. “I’m certain I could have come up with something rather more original than that.”

  I was beginning to understand Mr. Wang wasn’t just some accountant who was employed by 14K. Mr. Wang no doubt was 14K. He might even be the big boss here in Thailand. If he was, he would never admit it to a foreigner and it would make me look like I had been born yesterday to ask him.

  Something else was also becoming clear to me about Mr. Wang. His courtesy and soft-spoken gentlemanliness were even more threatening than anything a scar-faced thug from the Hong Kong docks might have thrown at me. Mr. Wang radiated power and connections, guanxi the Chinese call it. The more softly he spoke, the scarier he sounded.

  “So how do we proceed from here?” I asked.

  “I will arrange a private room for us here on Monday.”

  “Us?”

  “I have made arrangements for you to talk with our…” Mr. Wang stopped talking abruptly and searched for the right word. “Our guest, I suppose I should say,” he finished quickly.

  I sensed more was coming so I waited.

  “I do hope you will not be offended, Mr. Shepherd, but I really must sit in on your meeting. After all, I am responsible for what happens here with all this. It is only sensible for me to know what the two of you have spoken about, and what you haven’t.”

  “I have no problem with you listening to the conversation.”

  “I’m so pleased,” Mr. Wang said. “And I think right here at the club is a fine place to have the conversation. Hide in plain sight and all that. Besides, I’m here three or four days a week so no one will take any particular notice.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe someone else may be interested in this meeting?”

  “Not really. I’m simply a cautious man by nature. Shall we say twelve o’clock on Monday?”

  “Twelve o’clock on Monday it is.”

  “Wonderful,” Mr. Wang said, bounding to his feet and thrusting out his hand. “I look forward to Monday. You are a most interesting man, Mr. Shepherd. It has been a great pleasure for me to meet you, sir.”

  I started to tell Mr. Wang I hoped he would continue to feel the same way no matter how the conversation went on Monday, but that got me nothing so I let it go. I just offered my hand and we shook.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ALISA SAID SHE would call me in the afternoon about the arrangements to meet Kate, but it was early evening and I hadn’t heard anything from her yet. A feeling of concern was creeping up on me, but it was well balanced by a strong suspicion I would be better off if I never heard from Alisa again.

  About seven I set out walking from the Sheraton west on Sukhumvit Road toward the terrace at the Landmark Hotel, a spot I had always thought one of the more pleasant places in town to linger over an early evening drink. I had a Montecristo Double Edmundo in my shirt pocket as well as my cutter and a box of matches because the terrace was outside and I knew I could smoke there without the police demanding a bribe. I wasn’t a big cigar smoker, two or three a week at most, but there were occasions that just seemed incomplete without the sweet, spicy taste of a Montecristo. Sitting on the terrace of the Landmark Hotel with a drink in my hand on a sticky Bangkok evening was certainly one of those occasions.

  It wasn’t a long walk from the Sheraton to the Landmark, but every walk in Bangkok feels longer than it actually is. The heat and humidity, together with the chaos of the streets, turns every stroll into an exercise in suffering that is downright Buddhist. Then there’s the smell, too. Automobile exhaust, fish sauce, and sewage are all part of it, but there is something else as well. A pungent, unidentifiable skunkiness that always seems part of the very air in Bangkok.

  Sukhumvit Road was solidly packed with cars, trucks, and buses exactly as it was nearly twenty-four hours a day. Some vehicles belched toxic looking black smoke as they sat mired in traffic, others just rumbled as if they might be thinking about it. When th
e packs of motorbikes that were everywhere in Bangkok could no longer force their way through the congestion, they rode right up onto the sidewalks and sent pedestrians scattering.

  I was about halfway to the Landmark when something odd happened. Passing the big front window of a tailor shop where I had once bought quite a few suits, I glanced inside and saw several people standing around. After a few more steps, I realized one of them was the old guy who had patiently fitted the suits for me. I liked him. He was a nice man who put up with my chronic indecision over the finer points involved in tailoring a suit and I would have felt rotten just passing him by without saying hello.

  When I abruptly reversed direction to return to the shop, I noticed a man about a hundred feet behind me reverse direction as well.

  At a glance, he appeared to be Thai. He was of average height and build, and he wore jeans, sneakers, and a light tan windbreaker. Although it was warm and sticky, wearing a windbreaker wasn’t really all that odd. Often Thais who rode motorbikes wore windbreakers no matter what the temperature, turning them backwards to protect the front of their shirt while they rode.

  I stopped and watched the man. He moved away from me without glancing back, his hands in his pockets like a man out for a carefree evening stroll. At a small alleyway, he made a sudden sharp turn and disappeared behind a building.

  Was someone following me? That was a ridiculous thing to think, of course. Unless it wasn’t.

  Most of what I knew about spotting surveillance came from reading spy novels, but it certainly looked like this guy had been on my tail and bailed out when I unexpectedly reversed direction and came right at him. But how was that possible? To follow me when I left the Sheraton, someone would have to know I was at the Sheraton in the first place, and who knew that? No one. Absolutely no one at all.

  But then I thought about it a little harder and realized that wasn’t entirely true.

  When you register in a hotel in Thailand, they take a copy of your passport and add you to the report they file listing all the foreigners staying in the hotel. I didn’t know who the report was filed with, but it went somewhere, and that meant somewhere there was a database that included the information I was staying at the Sheraton. Or rather, the information that John Smith from Canada was staying at the Sheraton.

  So who knew I was John Smith from Canada?

  I told Mr. Wang about my John Smith alias and showed him my Canadian passport. Alisa also knew, of course, since that was how she identified me when I went to Le Bouchon. And naturally Jello knew, too, because he gave me the passport in the first place.

  Those were the only three people who knew I entered Thailand using the John Smith passport and would have registered in a hotel using it, unless one of them had told someone else and I couldn’t see that. Almost certainly any of them would have been able to find a way to tap whatever government database the passport information from the hotels went into, and any one of them would have been able to find out easily enough where I was staying.

  But why would they bother? I couldn’t think of a single reason why any of them would want to keep me under surveillance.

  All this intrigue was probably getting to me a little and I was letting my imagination run away with me. That was the obvious conclusion to come to here, and it was one that would make me feel very much better if I believed it.

  But I didn’t.

  Forgetting about the nice old man who once fitted my suits, I quickly turned around and resumed my walk to the Landmark.

  But what now? Should I make it obvious to whoever was following me that I knew they were there, or should I act as if I hadn’t spotted them? I had no idea. But until I did decide, I figured the best move was to keep my options open by playing dumb. I discovered that was remarkably easy under the circumstances.

  It killed me not to glance back over my shoulder to see if tan windbreaker had reappeared, but I successfully avoided that temptation all the way to the Landmark. Of course, there was an additional benefit in my exercise of such extraordinary discipline. If I wasn’t being followed at all and my imagination was only running wild, not looking back over my shoulder every minute or two had the further advantage of preventing me from feeling like a total idiot.

  The terrace at the Landmark wasn’t crowded and I chose a seat back away from the sidewalk where I wouldn’t be too conspicuous. I was hot and sticky from my walk so I ordered a Thai whiskey called Mekong with a lot of soda and ice added to it and lit up my Montecristo. From where I sat, I could see a small section of the sidewalk by peering between the tall planter boxes that edged the terrace. Naturally, I kept an eye out for a medium-sized guy wearing a tan windbreaker. I did not see one.

  The waiter had just delivered my second Mekong and soda, and I was about halfway through my Montecristo, when my telephone rang. Knowing it had to be Alisa calling at last, I pulled the phone out of my pocket. I looked at the display and saw Unknown Number. Of course. What else would it say?

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Smith?”

  A man’s voice, not Alisa’s, which threw me.

  “Who is this?”

  “I call Mr. Smith.”

  “I asked who you are.”

  “Alisa tell me call you.”

  That wasn’t exactly an answer to my question, of course, but it was probably the next best thing.

  “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  “I pick you up tonight. Ten o’clock.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come to garage level of Sheraton. Ten o’clock exactly. Black Mercedes. Numbers on license plate 347.”

  The news about where I was staying seemed to have spread everywhere. First tan windbreaker, and now another guy I’d never even met knew I was at the Sheraton. There would probably be a story in the Bangkok Post tomorrow so those few people in Thailand who hadn’t yet been informed where I was staying could catch up.

  “I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me who you are and where you want to take me.”

  The man hesitated. I was no doubt pushing him beyond the instructions he was given and Thai employees didn’t like to be pushed beyond their instructions. Having to improvise made them uncomfortable.

  “Tell me now or I’ll hang up,” I prodded.

  “I driver. I driver for prime minister.”

  “You mean for Kate?”

  “Krap.” Yes.

  “And you are picking me up to take me to see Kate?”

  “Krap.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I just driver, sir. I only drive.”

  “So you must know where you’re going to drive to.”

  The man hesitated again. He had obviously been given a message to deliver and he had done that. Now somehow he had ended up having a conversation with a crazy foreigner who insisted on asking him all kinds of questions. And that was the last thing he wanted.

  So the man did what most Thais do when confronted with a situation they don’t understand. He fled.

  When I heard the phone go dead, I couldn’t help but smile.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I FINISHED MY drink and smoked the rest of my Montecristo and thought about the call I just received.

  I was sure the guy was who he said he was. After all, if he hadn’t gotten the John Smith name and the telephone number from Alisa, I didn’t see where he could possibly have gotten it. Even if my lame alias had been spread around a bit, there was still the matter of the SIM card in my telephone. It was the one Alisa gave me. I certainly hadn’t given the number to anyone. I didn’t even know what the number was. My caller could only have the number if he had gotten it from Alisa. I couldn’t see any other way.

  Okay, so Alisa had arranged for Kate’s driver to pick me up tonight and take me to see her. That was perfectly straightforward, wasn’t it? Nothing strange about that.

  So what was making me so uneasy?

  I took a few last puffs on my Montecristo, pulled some bills out of my money cl
ip, and weighted them down on the table with my empty glass. When I looked up again, my eyes went to the gap between the planters through which I had been watching the sidewalk, and I caught just a glimpse of a medium-sized man wearing a tan windbreaker walking past the Landmark.

  Without stopping to think through what I was doing, I hoofed it over to the steps, trotted down to the sidewalk, and started walking quickly in the same direction tan windbreaker had been going. The crowds that way were particularly heavy because Nana Plaza, a sort of strip mall filled with go-go bars famous among Bangkok’s foreign visitors, was just around the corner. I stopped when I got to the next intersecting roadway and looked both ways. I could see all the way up to the entrance to Nana Plaza, but there was no sign anywhere of a man wearing a tan windbreaker.

  At the intersection there was a police box elevated above the crowds and for a second I thought of climbing up the steps to get a better vantage point to spot tan windbreaker, but I quickly came to my senses. The cops would no doubt be pissed off with me for bothering them since they were there strictly for show. They sat inside the little structure, played with their telephones, and never came out. The last thing they wanted to do was have any contact with the crazy foreigners in the Nana Plaza neighborhood.

  I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  I got back to the Sheraton in time to order a sandwich from room service, change my shirt, and tidy myself up a bit. Then, at exactly ten o’clock, I took the elevator down to the garage level one floor beneath the main lobby. Down there the elevators opened into a small space with the hotel’s executive offices on the left and a travel agency of some kind on the right. Both were closed for the night and the whole area was silent and deserted.

  Straight ahead through a pair of glass doors a short driveway led from Sukhumvit Road into the Sheraton’s garage. Just before reaching the machine that dispensed entry tickets to the garage, however, vehicles had the option of looping around behind the building and going right back out onto Sukhumvit Road. It made the garage floor an extremely discreet place to get into a car. Certainly far more discreet than the hotel’s main entry one floor up.